Mid-range GeForce 900M series are coming soon

NVIDIA will soon release new Maxwell mobile graphics cards. Those who already own GTX 860M/850M or 840M may not find new the parts attractive.

GeForce 800M series were rushed, because notebook manufacturers demanded new cards to be included into the offer. NVIDIA had no GK104 successor so they released slightly faster GK104 silicon with more memory. They also included some Maxwell parts.

The decision to launch 800M series that soon, not only caused problems with desktop series branding, but also forced NVIDIA to launch first Maxwell GPUs with 800M series, which was originally planned for ‘the proper Maxwell series’ aka 900M.

GeForce 900M series however, will almost exclusively use Maxwell architecture. There are rumors though that GeForce 920M may be GK208-based, however we can’t confirm it yet.

Side by side comparison between GeForce 800M and 900M series will give you the idea what to expect from new series.

GeForce GTX 965M should be GM206-based, and frankly I’m not sure why it was released as half-GM204 while the specs are exactly the same as GM206. It’s not like there was any competition anyway.

NVIDIA GeForce 800M / 900M series

GPU

CUDAs

Mem.

Model

Model

Mem.

CUDAs

GPU

GK104

1536

8GB 256b

GeForce GTX 880M

GeForce GTX 980M

8GB 256b

1536

GM204

GK104

1344

6GB 192b

GeForce GTX 870M

GeForce GTX 970M

6GB 192b

1280

GM204

GK104

1152

2GB 128b

GeForce GTX 860M #1

GeForce GTX 965M

4GB 128b

1024

GM204

GM107

640

2GB 128b

GeForce GTX 860M #2

GeForce GTX 960M *

2GB 128b

640

GM107

GM107

640

4GB 128b

GeForce GTX 850M

GeForce GTX 950M *

2GB 128b

640

GM107

GM108

384

4GB 64b

GeForce 840M

GeForce 940M *

4GB 64b

384

GM108

GM108

256

2GB 64b

GeForce 830M

GeForce 930M *

2GB 64b

256

GM108

* unconfirmed

New drivers disable GeForce 800M/900M series overclocking

NVIDIA recently blocked the option to overclock mobile graphics cards with the latest drivers. As the employee explains, it was never meant to be available, and it was released by … mistake. This year clearly did not start well for NVIDIA.

Personally I’m not surprised overclocking was disabled, actually I’m surprised it was allowed before. There are far too many reasons why it should be disabled. Some people don’t realize that even the gaming notebooks only ship 150-200W power bricks. Maxwell architecture clearly has too much overclocking potential, allowing users to reach much higher clocks than designed, thus company decided to disable overclocking completely. I would rather expect more intelligent decision to limit GPU Boost speeds with lower temperature (it would basically mean cards won’t even reach the clocks you chose), BUT overclocking would technically still be available. Instead, we have this: